Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=psup.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Penn State University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Comparative Literature Studies.
http://www.jstor.org
ReadingOedipusin Milan Kundera'sThe
Unbearable
Lightnessof Being
HANA PICHOVAAND MARJORIEE. RHINE
LITERATURE
COMPARATIVE Vol.34, No. 1, 1997.
STUDIES,
Copyright © 1997 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.
72 COMPARATIVE
LITERATURE
STUDIES
this metaphor extend beyond the realm of love (when his article com-
paring the Czech communist leaders to Oedipus gets him into trouble
with the secret police), and the reader,too, comes to graspmore fully the
impact of the myth of Oedipus upon many of the characters'lives in The
UnbearableLightnessof Being.In fact, Sophocles9play serves as an impor-
tant intertext, appearingin many key scenes as a catalyst of the action
that unfolds.2
In grapplingwith the significance of Oedipusin Kundera'snovel,
the possibility that Oedipus constructshimself as guilty although he is
never provenguilty is of utmost importance.As one critic explains, "It is,
then, possible that Sophocles1Oedipus was never wholeheartedlytrying
to establish his innocence at all, but that he felt compelled to make the
prophecythat he would kill his father and marryhis mother come true."3
Oedipusmakesthe prophecycome true by rashlyaccepting others' unre-
liable accounts of his past. For example, as a young man in Corinth, Oe-
dipus is quick to believe the words of a drunkardwho raises questions
about his parentage;later he readily accepts the messenger'sversion of
the recoveryof the baby on the mountain. Reading the past in this way
provesto be dangerous:"the single man who plays prosecutor,judge, and
agent of punishment quickly comes to regardhimself as the accused
The charges against Oedipus are based entirely on his own testimony
against himself and unsupportedhearsay"(Ahl 220-21).
The idea that Oedipus "plays"the partsof prosecutor,judge and pu-
nitive agent is clear from a close look at the play. Once questions about
character motives are raised, it becomes easy to speculate that Creon's
protestationsthat "What can the despot throne confer more sweet than
peaceful sway and princely influence?"(Oedipus592-593) is likely an
exaggerateddenial, because Creon, as brotherto Jocasta,would have be-
come ruler if Oedipus had not so conveniently arrived in Thebes (Ahl
189). Similarly,it is odd, as Oedipushimself points out, that Teiresiasdid
not mention the identity of the killer earlierif he has in fact known it all
along: "That day this wise man did not breathe it. Why?"(570). While
not conclusive, this suggests that Teiresiasmay be manipulatingor toy-
ing with Oedipus during the complex interrogationscene in which he
finally accuses Oedipus of the murder.Perhapsthe seer resents Oedipus,
who has usurpedTeiresias'status as problemsolver becauseof his victory
over the Sphinx (Ahl 91, 102),4 a possibility Oedipus himself considers
in lines 390-400. Also, as noted above, the messengerwho finally re-
veals the story of the baby which he received from Laius'shepherdand
handed over to the royal family of Corinth is not necessarily a reliable
READING
OEDIPUSIN KUNDERA 73
written the article. Love itself, then, is not why metaphors might be dan*
gerous. Thinking about Oedipus does not lead Tomas to a deeper love of
Tereza; rather it leads him to a "dangerous," publicly voiced interpréta*
tion of the political situation:
the article turned their life upside down. But now, just looking at
the spine of the book seemedto calm her. It madeher feel as though
Tomashad purposelyleft a trace, a messagethat her presence here
was his doing. (153-54)
Throughout the novel, books operate for Terezaas signifiersof a higher,
more meaningfulexistence (hence the importanceof books as "props"in
her first meetings with Tomas). Terezareads Sophocles' Oedipusas just
such a sign, as a "trace"or markof what Tomasrepresentsin her life and
of the possibility that she might be able to converse with the engineer on
a higher plane:
When the tall engineer came back into the room, she would ask
him why he had it, whether he had read it, and what he thought
of it. That would be her ruse to turn the conversation away from
the hazardousterrain of a stranger'sflat to the intimate world of
Tomas's thoughts. (154)
The terms the narratoruses to describe the oppositions Terezaimagines
here- "hazardousterrain"versus"intimateworld of Tomas'sthought"-
are representativeof the spaces available to Tomas and Terezathrough-
out the novel: a treacherouspublic space in which compromiseis only a
wordawayand an inner space that is the last strongholdof freedom.These
terms are literalizedin Tereza'sencounter with the engineer,becauseshe
has entered an unfamiliarphysical space. In fact, her physical body,not
only her integrity,is underassault:the engineer brusquelytakes the book
from her hands and forces her into the sexual act.
Terezais unable to understandjust what this encounter was about
until her friend, a formerambassador,interpretsit as one act in a "prear-
rangedscenario."As he explains, "The third function [of the secret po-
lice] consists of staging situations that will compromiseus" (163). With
this friend'shelp Terezasees the dramaas much more complicated, with
roles played not only by the engineer but also by a seemingly love-struck
drunkenboy, another man who had accusedher of providingalcohol to a
minor, and the engineer, who had rallied to her defense againstthe accu-
satory man and had thus won her trust:"So all three had been playing
partsin a prearrangedscenariomeant to soften her up for the seduction!"
(164). She begins to reevaluatethe propsand scenery:
How could she have missed it! The flat was so odd, and he didn't
belong there at all! Why would an elegantly dressedengineer live
in a miserableplace like that? Was he an engineer? . . . Besides,
READING
OEDIPUS
IN KUNDERA 79
hero, the self, is the only character who has motives and ambi-
tions. We can remain as oblivious to its [the play's]pluralismas
Oedipus. But we do not have to, (Ah! 265)
So too, readersof Kundera'snovel do not have to remain as oblivious to
the possible dangers of misreadingsas the characterswithin the novel
are.
The University of Texas
SoutheasternLouisiana University
NOTES
1. Milan Kundera,The UnbearableLightnessof Being,trans.Michael HenryHeim (New
York:Harper and Row, 1984). All subsequent page references in the text are to this
English translation.
2. Shoshana Fclman,"BeyondOedipus:The Specimen Storyof Pyschoanalysis,"Lacan
and Narration,ed. Robert Con Davis (Baltimore:John Hopkins UP, 1983) 1022.
The preeminence of Oedipusas the exemplar text of narrativetheory is no doubt partly
due to Barthes1influential claim that "it may be significant that it is at the same mo-
ment (around the age of three) that the little human 'invents' at once sentence, narra-
tive and the Oedipus"("Introductionto the StructuralAnalysis of Narrative,"A Barthes
Reader,ed. Susan Sontag [New York:Hill and Wang, 1982] 295).
3. FrederickAhl, Sophocles1Oedipus:Evidenceand Self-Conviction(Ithaca: Cornell
UP, 1991) 262-64. Hereaftercited in text. Cf. SandorGoodhart, MLeistas Ephaske:Oe-
dipus and Laius' Many Murderers,"Diacritics8 (1978): "if we follow the play at close
range, it is Oedipus' gesture of appropriationof the myth that comes into focus rather
than the myth itself. . . ." (57).
4* On Creon and Teiresias,cf. Goodhart 60.
5. Cynthia Chase emphasizesthe prevalence of "textualacts" in her article "Oedipal
Textuality:Reading Freud'sReading of Oedipus,"Diacritics9 (1979): "Whilean extraor-
dinarysex act is one majorcomponent of Oedipus'drama,text acts are just as majorand
extraordinarya component of the story; . . . Oedipus reads his guilt in a palimpsest
compounding the oracle told to him by Jocasta and Laiuswith the oraculardefinition of
his parentage that first drove him from Corinth. What convinces him is a constricting
network of texts: the Herdsman'sword that he helped 'save from a dreadfulfate' the
exposed child entrusted to him by the queen, the messenger'snews that he was Polybus'
and Meropes' adopted heir, his wife's confession to exposing her child, and above all,
the wordsof the oracle, the Pythia'sdreadfulstructuralaccount of ancestry,and Apollo's
fearful designation of a particularinfant aggressor"(59).
6. In 1948 the communists seized power in Czechoslovakiaand installed a totalitar-
ian regime. The country became closed to Western influences, freedom of speech was
abolished and strict censorship was implemented. Only twenty yearslater did the popu-
lation experience partial relief, but "socialismwith a human face," directed by the pro-
gressive wing of the Communist Party, ended with the Soviet invasion of 1968. The
seventies and eighties were again markedby ideological dogmatism.In 1989, the Velvet
Revolution, mastermindedby university students, brought back the democratic ideals
Czechoslovakia was built on in 1918.
READINGOEDIPUSIN KUNDERA 83
7. This is perhapsbest described by the novel's heroine Sabina: "Livingin truth, ly-
ing neither to ourselvesnor others, was possible only awayfrom the public: the moment
someone keeps an eye on what we do, we involuntarily make allowances for that eye,
and nothing we do is truthful. Having a public, keeping a public in mind, means living
in lies. Sabina despised literaturein which people give away all kinds of intimate secrets
about themselves and their friends.A man who loses his privacyloses everything,Sabina
thought. And a man who gives it up of his own free will is a monster. That was why
Sabina did not suffer in the least from having to keep her love secret. On the contrary,
only by doing so could she live in truth"(112-13).
For more on the subject of freedom and the characters' inner world, see Hana
Pichova, "The Narrator in Milan Kundera'sThe UnbearableLightnessof Being,"SEE],
Vol. 36, No. 2 (1992): 217-226.
8. Here the translation coincides precisely with the Czech text.
9. In the seventies and eighties, the Czech intellectual dissidents frequently staged
censored theatrical productions in their own apartments.